John Wolfe says he wouldn't mind if the proposed Horseshoe Shoal wind farm were constructed in Barnstable Harbor instead. "There's plenty of wind here," he commented breezily one day recently after wind had leveled a large tree onto his garage roof. He should know about wind. Wolfe's was among the first modern-day Barnstable families to erect a wind turbine on their property to reduce the cost of electricity, which, unfortunately, didn't happen. He faults the vagaries of a developing technology for that. Being a windmill pioneer of sorts got Wolfe a mention in Time magazine 25 years ago. "I remember a couple of people came here. They didn't ask too many questions. A couple of things in the story weren't quite right, but hey, they have to make a story." It is difficult to imagine today that in 1980, when the story appeared, wind turbines were only beginning to attract media attention to those "futuristicappearing contraptions" beginning to dot the mountain passes out west and the countryside elsewhere. They were described as updated versions of "the first reported windmill, which was built to capture the power of Persian breezes in the 7th Century." The Time article even mentioned a "new law" that "requires utilities to reimburse customers for any surplus electricity windmills feed back into the system." Of Wolfe, the Time article said: "Retired farmer John F. Wolfe, 62, installed an Enertech 1500 at his oceanfront (sic) house in Barnstable, Mass., to harness Cape Cod breezes. When he and his wife are sleep, the windmill keeps churning. Since the local utility has to buy the power back from him, his overall monthly bill winds up substantially lower." A nonagenarian now, Wolfe lives on the shore of Barnstable Harbor on Locust Lane, a stone's throw from Mill Beach in Barnstable Village and just across the harbor from the Sandy Neck lighthouse. How Wolfe got there and purchased an emerging technology constitutes a story of self-sufficiency. Born in Winchester, Wolfe got a degree in horticulture at U-Mass Amherst in 1940, went into the Army in World War II, then landed a job as head farmer at the Westboro State Hospital, a mental institution that was quite self-sufficient itself. Sitting in the cozy living room of the house he built with his own hands "and some help" on the shore of the bay, Wolfe waxed nostalgic: "It was a big place," he said of the hospital he served as head farmer for 30 years. "At one time we had 3,000 patients there. The place was set on 760 acres. We had 600 pigs, 130 young stock cattle, 36 acres of vegetables and a lot of grounds to keep up. We sent the pigs out to slaughter once they grew to size, while some of our young stock went to other hospitals." Wolfe lived in a house on the grounds and became accustomed to self-sufficiency, as he had during the war as a crewman on a tank destroyer armed with a 77 mm rifle that he described as "a corker." Wolfe and his crew chased the enemy "from Normandy to Czechoslovakia," and he was hit by shrapnel. "To think it was our own stuff, too," he murmured while shaking his head. Changes in state law and military service before 1940 combined later to help Wolfe retire at 55, come to the Cape and build the house on land he had inherited from his dentist father, who had inherited it from his father. Wolfe spent several winters in his new house on the Cape, noticing a lot of wind coming from the north. "It was about the time (1970s) people had started talking about windmills. I thought I would look into it and save some money. There was a windmill being produced by a company in Vermont, Enertech I think it was, with a dealership in Mashpee. "So in 1977 I bought one for $4,800 and the people from Mashpee came out here to set it up. The blades were about six feet, a pretty good size, and the pole was 77 feet long. They sunk that about 10 feet into the ground. "I had to go for approval from the Old King's Highway Historic District and it was the first time a windmill had come up. I had to get the OK from my neighbors. Bill Britton, who installed the roof on my house, I think helped sway the vote for conditional approval. The pole had climbing pegs and cables to steady it. It was nice the way they did it." He said the company wired the lines underground to the house and installed a third meter "to show whether the windmill was making electricity or not," he said. Well, it did make electricity. Over the course of a year it generated 116kw. It was a little bit of a savings. "It was good," Wolf said. But it wasn't perfect. He said the wind had to be coming in from the north for the windmill to churn out kilowatts. It didn't produce if the wind died down or came in from the south. "Sometimes it would turn on its own and sometimes it wouldn't turn at all." He said sometimes the blades turned in counter rotation and would take electricity "like a motor when going the other way. "I tried to change its direction by turning it on and off and finally broke the propeller. Then it would turn like a son of a gun and she (his wife, Elaine), was scared it would come off and fly into the house. The propeller finally flopped down against the pole. We had it for about three or four years." Then he hauled its remains away. After all that, is Wolfe a bit leery of wind power? Not at all. "It was good enough to get another one if it could turn into the wind," Wolfe said. He said quite a few people on the Cape had purchased one. "They're all gone now," he said. "They didn't work out. It wasn't as much of a bonanza they thought it was going to be, I guess. "When the windmill was running, there was a hum to it. When the folks came in from fishing, they looked for the windmill as a guiding point. I kind of liked that. It was nice to give them a marker. In the fog, they could hear the hum." Wolfe thinks the proposed and highly contentious Horseshoe Shoals project would be an attraction. "It's so far out it wouldn't bother anybody's view," he said. The wind power controversy is another generation's problem now. Wolfe's pioneering is over and he's sitting comfortably on the sidelines. "I don't do much, just travel around a bit, going for bird feed and groceries, feed the birds, take a few short trips by car to Nauset Beach or to Eastham." If there is one definitive answer to the current turbine struggle, it's still blowing in the wind. Published Date: 1-11-08